FSANZ (Food Standards Australia and New Zealand) is proposing to end any requirement for labelling certain foods which have been genetically modified.
In brief, foods that they judge through various technical criteria are ‘substantially equivalent’ to natural foods will no longer be labelled as such or even referred to as ‘genetically modified’.
“In essence, the regulations will be accommodating the commercial biotechnology food sector ensuring that they will no longer be required to label many gene modified foods. In other words, the public will be left in the dark about the GM origin of a wide range of foods and thereby denied their right of choice.”
My commentary (reply)
@actparty
I’m a Libertarian. Understand this… *We the people* of New Zealand have the right to demand any product containing GM organisms be clearly labeled.
That does not violate Free trade. It protects against subversion and trickery.
The big question is why *certain interests* would want to hide such a declaration?
It’s obvious who those interests are…. *The Mega corporations* … and why do they want license to operate in the dark?
Because they know *Consumers* don’t want GM Products! Ie Consumers will not willingly prefer GM food over Natural food if they can tell the difference!
So this is about deceiving the consumers… for the sake of Mega corporations and their Patented GM Crap!
Furthermore… *on the basis of property rights* We New Zealanders do not consent to GM Crops being grown here in NZ *because You cannot guarantee the GM organisms will not escape into the wider environment…. contaminating the property and crops of others who do not want GM organisms on their farms or in their food!
Therefore it is upon Libertarian first principles that I demand the Government Prohibit all GM organisms unless they are grown under such conditions that guarantees they will not contaminate the property or crops of others.
The Big corporations want the people to sacrifice their rights just so they can make a fortune without bearing full responsibility for the risks their activities cause to others.
******
Politicians are too easily corrupted by Corporations.
Too often Politicians are one track minded… easily duped by pseudoscience… and willing to trample on the rights of the little people for what they perceive as economic gain.
All too often Politicians serve the Profiteering interests of Corporations over the rights of the people whom they are elected to serve.
One of the most blatant forms this has been taking in recent times is attempts by governments to prevent people growing their own food at home.
By attacking Home grown food this threatens the Store of Seeds held by the general public and their ability to feed themselves in hard times.
It causes them to become dependent upon Big Food.
Patented GM products has almost nothing to do with the betterment of humanity and everything to do with *Ownership of verities of food crops for profit*
Property rights is the strongest defense against such a scheme as unless corrupt politicians allow corporations to spread their mutant strains without proper safeguards… It would cut into the profitability of such crops if they had to be grow under stringent conditions that prevented escape into the wider environment.
Here’s the thing… Mr. Big Food… If you can grow your crap without affecting the property of others and their GM Free Crops… and if you clearly label your products… full disclosure and are able to get them to market and sell them … ie you have a customer base… All will be well and good, yet if your operation threatens neighboring farmers and you must hide the fact your produce has GMs to sell it at the market…. then you can go fly a kite!
The viability of your GM Crops must factor in the rights of others *who were here first*.
I’ve had a guts full of constant encroachments upon self-reliance and healthy foods.
Monsanto and other Mega corporations can Bugger off as far as I’m concerned.
We esp don’t want Bill Gates fake Meats!
New Zealanders don’t need their crap.
We can grow Clean Natural foods.
That’s what New Zealanders want for our kids, and by keeping our produce 100% GMO Free we can supply the global market for others who want the same for themselves and their kids.
Big Food needs to grasp the fact that Junk Food is no longer wanted.
The world wants God’s Natural goodness.
This is why corporations don’t want to declare their GM produce.
We can not allow them to hide their crap in our food.
Propaganda would say that the desire to have clean natural food is a ‘Luddite’ anti-science mentality.
Satan laughing spreads his wings…
Intelligence? Why did ‘intelligent’ people fall for all the nonsense? (All the Covid 19 pseudoscience and state tyranny and propaganda). Teacher Nigel Watson: YouTube.
Watch video (below).
I belong to a ‘Physics’ social media page.
On it a certain person seeking to justify belief in the Natural Unguided Evolution of everything posted the following….
Do you consider the following scenario impossible, and if so , why? I think the following scenario is possibly true:
“We are all part of the same universe that appears to trend towards disorder in the forward direction of time, following laws of nature. And we are all subject to “mistakes” that a universe makes as it does its thing. And we are all subject to “successes” that a universe makes as it does it’s thig. And what one of us perceives as a “mistake” , another may well perceive as a “success”. All as the universe (with us as a part of it) continues simply doing it’s thing, following laws of nature.
@Tim Wikiriwhitagging you as this is the main post requested.”
He also attached the following video…
***********
I begin my critique….
Ok…. very interesting Ideas… yet when you analyze the premises we do not find true ‘Chaos’… but a chain of causation. Materialistic Determinism.
There is a lot going on here… for example the multi-pendulums appear to be behaving quite differently when in reality they are all obeying the same ‘natural laws’… so it is wrong to see this as any significant difference… or chaos.
The Lady says @ 3:18 ‘Our Future has not been written yet’ … which is contradictory to the fundamental premises…. for if we could describe the infinitesimal differences between the starting points of the pendulums, and other conditional differences they encounter (including Einsteinian level fluxations) in their motions… we could predict where their motions into the future and explain why they appear very different…. ‘no real chaos’ involved.
Under this cosmology everything we see in this universe must be explicable via an unbroken chain of natural causation all the way back to when the Big Bang exploded… including what you perceive as all your personal virtues… and vises…. unfulfilled hopes and dreams!
It is because things like Objectively binding morals and values cannot be derived from Materialist premises that those who are committed to the materialist idea are forced to arbitrarily deem such things to be illusory.
In the same way any notion of ‘Beauty’ also must be ultimately meaningless…. for beauty is a value judgement that has no place in the cold reality of Elements and motion… and yet we have a perception of Beauty.
now the ultimate question is this… can such ‘Chaos theory’… as enunciated in the video… working with the materials we find in this universe… have sufficient explanatory power to answer how it is we humans exist on this planet… orbiting the Sun?
My answer is an emphatic No!
There is a missing essential paradigm…
I will speak more of this tomorrow… yet lets contemplate the Space Station…. How it orbits the Earth… How in doing so it fully complies with the Laws of Nature…. and yet while it does not contradict the Laws of Nature… it’s existence cannot be explained in purely natural terms… via a chain of causation that leads back to the Big Bang.
There is a special element that needs to understood…. and I will leave it here… and carry on tomorrow.
Just one or two or three more things to ponder… What was the cause of the Big Bang… from where did this universe ‘pop’ into existence? And what prevents your rationale from hanging upon the absurdity of ‘Infinite regression’? For If this universe is not eternal… it had a beginning… and if it had a beginning it must have had a cause… was there by your reckoning… an infinite chain of causation? Or Ultimately do you accept the necessity that there exists *some un created Ultimate reality*?
For the first question of Philosophy is …. ‘why is there something rather than nothing?’
Science is no escape from the human condition… that gospel purported by many…is false.
Though we may increase in mastery over nature…certainty will always escape us… thus science is a pragmatic pursuit, not a source of absolute knowledge.
With every new answer comes new question.
We will always rely on axioms and presuppositions… we cannot escape the need for faith… which underpins what we think we know… even the things we are most sure about….
I am an Engineer by trade having served as an apprentice back in the 80s.
I studied General science and Engineering at high school… two subjects I excelled in given I enjoyed them both, yet to get into the Engineers class meant not being allowed to study ‘physics’ and ‘chemistry’ as two independent classes that were more specialist than general science.
The School must have thought General science was sufficient for engineers! (There is an element of truth to this)
Anyway I have never regretted my decision to learn a trade via ‘Hands on apprenticeship system’… we would spend several months a year at a Technical institute learning theory, the rest was learning on the job. I did a ‘fitting and turning’ apprenticeship which is machine work… lathes mills, etc plus ‘fitting’ which was welding and fabrication, and mechanic stuff. Best of all at you are earning coin and don’t graduate with a massive student debt.
Yet you learn ‘different’ things via an apprenticeship than what you learn when you go to University.
We learn mostly Newtons theories of Physics rather than Einstein’s.
And that does in the end have it’s disadvantages as I will confess to struggling with matters of Relativity and the claims of Quantum Physics… which I must do my best to learn at home by dent of my own desire to learn.
I must content myself at best with Laymen’s understanding.
I do accept that Einstein had a more accurate model for how the universe functions and that the State of the Art requires utilisation of his equations.
This achievement of Einstein to challenge Newton in itself must be one of the most important contentions that must be factored into… and embodied in any ‘philosophy of science’ if you hope to have a valid understanding of what science is… and what it is not.
Newton appeared absolute and unquestionable!
That was ‘the verdict of Science’.
Anyone who questioned him was automatically a crackpot.
Mad Einstein did exactly that… and in so doing exploded the notion that Science is a foundation for absolute truth… absolute knowledge… Newton was overthrown, and cracks are beginning to appear even in Einstein. This should at least rattle the nerves of arrogant ‘know it alls’ who think they have attained God-like certainty and omniscience!
Given we now know how little we know that such attitudes still hold sway says more about Human beings irrationality and prejudice… and incapacity for objectivity. Don’t you think?
On the other hand by grounding myself in swaff and metal filings … and big hammers and avoiding the indoctrinations of ivory tower intellectuals has given me ‘a freedom of thought’… whereby I stand on the outside… looking in at all the whack claims being made by Quantum physics, etc… and intuitively I can see these guys are wallowing in math-madness…
for example their massive claims about Dark matter! To me it is as mythical as the Loch Ness monster! I don’t buy into it…. and sure enough new theories arise that relegate ‘Dark matter’ to the dustbin of vain imagination.
Science is a learning process at best… never mistake wild assertions as actual facts!
For the sort of Engineering I do Newton is still King!
Yet we learn that ‘correlation does not prove causation…’ a very important thing to understand in our age of computer modeling whereby almost any hair-brain idea can be given ‘credence’ by fiddling with numbers and parameters.
I would suggest that Global warming is founded upon such pseudo-scientific modeling that was bespoke made to accommodate Political aspirations…
Michael Mann’s ‘Hockey stick graph’ is today absolutely debunked yet the damage it has done in skewing science has been incalculable.
Above is the definitive declaration on informed and prudent concerns about the Mass Covid 19 Vaccination scheme and a rational basis for refusing to consent.
Like Rabbi Chanaya Weissman I too do not trust the people involved, nor do I believe the risk/benefits are weighted in favour of taking these experimental treatments.
To have a good grasp of what is at stake a person need not go any further than digesting the points made within this document, and go research and fact check them for themselves.
Everyone who shares these concerns ought to download and save copies of this document, and share it with their Family, friends.
It ought to be printed in the thousands and handed out in city squares and dropped in every letterbox.
Because it exposes the dirty game the Globalists and Government are playing, it may ‘disappear’ off the net.
For that reason I have included screen shots of the document below yet I would prefer readers to click the link provided (Above) to read and share it from it’s original source.
The Authorities will certainly be displeased with anyone found distributing it to the public and I have no doubt they will instruct the police to harass and find grounds to arrest any dissident distributing this document in public squares, and to seize and destroy all copies in their possession.
Yet still I believe the crisis we face from government tyranny to merit running such personal risks… for Evil prevails when good people do nothing.
Be bold, stand up for your principles, Yet be prepared to maintain your peaceful and lawful composure if confronted by Law enforcement who seek to intimidate you into silence.
Have video recording your activism.
Please follow that link and read the story there.
My short commentary is below followed with a few excerpts from the article reproduced simply out of fear that this valuable tale may disappear off the net.
Originally published Dec. 31, 2006, with the headline: Doctor and invention outlast jeers and threats
By JOE ROJAS-BURKE, The Oregonian
**********
Commentary by Tim Wikirwihi….
Epic!
This is a perfect example of how Forward thinkers are treated like fools by the Backward and entrenched status quo… and how innovators meet with hostility from the establishment.
It also shows why People should not simply leave their own health concerns or those of their friends and loved ones in the hands of ‘the Experts’… or trust that they are telling you the whole truth!
It is also informative that this sort of behavior is especially prevalent in the fields of science exposing the fallacious yet carefully crafted myth that the scientific fraternity is peopled with enlightened and objective thinkers who are especially open to progressive ideas… the opposite is true… science is infested with narrow minded and Dogmatically opinionated drones… who are more likely to resist progress than speed it.
And this being so my friends… you had better be prepared to swim against the flow of ‘accepted opinions’ if you want to more closely understand the truth.
Quote:
“In a pause between patients, Epley reflected on the reasons other doctors refused to accept his findings for so many years.
“If I look back at medical school, much of it was misinformation,” he said. “Physicians learn to just do the routine, to do the accepted things — don’t go too far out. They’ve got so much to lose if they stick their neck out.”
Rest in Peace Dr Epley.
Tim Wikiriwhi
????????????????????????????????????
Excerpts….
“He is a doctor and innovator. Years ago, he took aim at a medical curse that has disabled millions of people and defied treatment. He came up with a cure that was astonishingly simple. No surgery. No pills.
Now, think: Would his colleagues cheer his stroke of ingenuity by spreading the news — and practice — of the treatment to relieve suffering?
No. Inexplicably, they rejected him, ridiculed him, heaved accusations that threatened his license to practice medicine.”
“John Epley’s stooped shoulders and gentle eyes gave him a turtlish look. He wore a thickly knotted necktie and wrinkled sport coat. No amount of combing could tame the stubborn cowlick in his short hair.
His audience of ear surgeons muttered skeptically and shook their heads. Few at the October 1980 meeting in Anaheim, Calif., believed Epley’s claim to have developed a cure for the most common cause of chronic vertigo.
In any given year, tens of thousands of people seek treatment for the disorder’s strange, crippling attacks. Provoked by a casual tilt or turn of the head, the victim’s surroundings whirl. The eyeballs twitch involuntarily. Nausea overwhelms the senses. On-and-off bouts may torment a sufferer for years.
Physicians were baffled. The best they could offer as treatment was a drastic last resort: surgically destroying nerves to the inner ear, impairing patients’ balance and possibly their hearing.
Epley proposed an elegant alternative.
His talk concluded with a demonstration, a young woman acting as his patient. Epley and his research collaborator, audiologist Dominic Hughes, began by tilting the woman flat on her back, her head hanging over the end of an exam bench. Hughes cradled her head in his hands and rotated it about 45 degrees to his right, then he and Epley rolled the woman’s head and shoulders back to the left in a counterclockwise move that ended with her face down. In a final move, Hughes and Epley lifted the woman to a sitting position.
And that was it.
By then, audience members were walking out. One doctor stomped up to Epley and slapped down a comment card before exiting. He’d scrawled, “I resent having to waste my time listening to some guy’s pet theory.”
”
To maintain balance, the brain coordinates messages from the eyes, from muscles pulling against gravity and from motion sensors inside the inner ear’s maze of fluid-filled canals.
Another researcher had reported finding chalklike particles in the inner ears of vertigo patients and proposed that these particles clumped onto ears’ motion sensors to trigger false sensations of motion. But the hypothesis failed to explain the on-again-off-again nature of positional vertigo: If particles stuck on sensors, why did dizziness ever go away?
Epley and Hughes reasoned that the particles must float freely. Head movements might shift them, causing a siege of dizziness until the particles settled or shifted. It might be possible, they figured, to move the particles where they wouldn’t cause mischief. Since the particles are denser than inner-ear fluid and sink, gravity could do the work.
Hughes used plastic tubing to build a model of the inner ear. To simulate loose particles, he put BBs in the coiled tubes. He and Epley flipped and turned the hand-size model as they might a kid’s puzzle, to work out a sequence of moves to reposition the tiny metal balls.They began testing the moves on people straightaway, tilting and rolling them on an exam bench. Odd as the treatment sounded, frustrated patients were keen to try it.
The first two or three subjects seemed to gain immediate relief. At first, Epley wasn’t too impressed. The condition often clears up by itself, he recalls reminding himself. He didn’t know whether he had made any difference.
But when the treatment cured several more patients, including one who had endured dizziness for a decade, he and Hughes realized they’d hit upon a great discovery.
Hard sell
In Portland, some of Epley’s colleagues were so skeptical that they began to question his medical skills. Some doctors stopped referring patients.”
“In front of hostile crowds, he kept presenting his findings. Ken Aebi, a medical supply salesman in Portland who’d become Epley’s friend, felt helplessly embarrassed for him. Epley struggled at the lectern, reading too much from notes and occasionally wandering off on tangents. Some doctors rolled their eyes. Others laughed openly.”
Desperate patient
At an emergency room in 1995, a doctor couldn’t figure out the cause of a sudden attack of vertigo that struck Joseph Delahunt.
He had crawled from the living room of his North Portland house out to his car so that his wife could drive him to the hospital. Delahunt hung his head out the window and vomited most of the way. An Air Force veteran in his mid-50s, he was healthy and active — selling real estate and practicing yoga — until the attacks started.
Delahunt consulted his family doctor, then tried a neurologist and an ear, nose and throat doctor. They prescribed motion-sickness drugs and other medicines that didn’t help much. One told him he’d have to learn to live with the “benign” condition. None mentioned Epley’s treatment. His wife discovered it on the Internet.
Delahunt’s condition worsened. To avoid unbearable, spinning nausea, he sat as still as he could in a reclining chair. For nearly three months, he left the recliner only to go the bathroom.
At Epley’s office, an assistant helped Delahunt down a long hallway to a gray-walled room with closed blinds. An ungainly apparatus filled much of the room. Inside a giant steel ring hung a padded chair that reminded Delahunt of an ejection seat. Motors, gears and drive-chains were rigged to flip and twirl the chair like a carnival ride.
Delahunt stepped up to a platform and into the chair. An assistant clipped straps across his chest and ankles. She covered his eyes with a bulky mask. It contained a video camera to track his eyes. She clipped a vibrator behind his ear. It buzzed gently, more lightly than a cell phone on vibrate.
“Are you comfortable?” the assistant asked. Delahunt nodded, grateful for the Valium he’d taken.Epley fingered a joystick controller to tilt the chair back until Delahunt was face up. A flick of the joystick rotated Delahunt like a barbecue skewer. On a black-and-white computer display, Epley monitored his patient’s eyes for a characteristic twitching movement triggered by positional vertigo. He repeated the series of calibrated tilts and whirls. Then he swung the chair upright and face-forward.
No waves of vertigo struck when Delahunt moved his head. The nausea had cleared. He stopped taking the medications other doctors prescribed and resumed his life.
Threat to livelihood
In Portland, many doctors still dismissed Epley as a crank.
The conflict flared into a crisis in 1996. The Oregon Board of Medical Examiners notified Epley that he was under investigation for alleged unprofessional conduct.
His medical license and livelihood were on the line.”
“Epley’s accusers, two Portland physicians, testified that Epley was administering the nerve-deadening drugs recklessly, based on inadequate diagnostic testing.
Epley’s main defender, a Harvard-affiliated specialist from Boston, described Epley as “a forward thinker who has been right virtually every time he stuck his neck out.”
Litzenberger left no doubt whom she found most credible, portraying the board’s medical experts as hostile, one-sided and ill-informed. In the summer of 2001, Litzenberger dismissed all claims.”
“By then, a review article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine had credited John Epley as the inventor of the “treatment currently recommended” for positional vertigo. In clinical trials, about 90 percent of patients were cured by a single treatment. Doctors applying treatment around the world referred to it as the “Epley maneuver.”
Victory….
“At 76, Epley sees patients three days a week. He spends the two other days of the workweek at Vesticon. His daughter’s startup has already launched development of two of Epley’s other inventions.
In a pause between patients, Epley reflected on the reasons other doctors refused to accept his findings for so many years.
“If I look back at medical school, much of it was misinformation,” he said. “Physicians learn to just do the routine, to do the accepted things — don’t go too far out. They’ve got so much to lose if they stick their neck out.”
2019 epilogue
Three years after this article was published on the front page of The Oregonian, Dr. John Epley had a stroke and retired. He died in July 2019.
“Has anyone provided proof of God’s inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on.”
David Berlinski
“If somebody says something to me particularly stupid, yet they say it with Proper Grammar… Then I immediately assume the following…What Graduate school did you attend?…”
Dennis Prager.
“The Chaotic forces have taken over education…”
Watch this great video (below)
Idiot hippies are calling this “Environmental art…
No!
You superstitious fools!
Atheist *Scientists* argue… and they would know… because they are so much smarter than idiots who believe in ‘Intelligent design’… and…. you are not *qualified enough* to have any contrary opinion of weight…. they say this is ‘simply’ a natural occurrence… no design… fully explicable via the laws of gravity, mass, motion, etc.
Pay Homage to Multiverse theory!
We just so happen to live in a universe where this happened…. randomly… without a creator…
Dont argue… you are ‘Anti-science’… (and probably a terrorist)
Just believe….
No, Richard, your speculation is not a legitimate scientific theory, it is infantile hocus pocus, which is all I’ve come to expect of you.
Infantile hocus pocus because demons do not exist, neither do gods, fairies, Santa’s-little-helpers or harpies. You’ve never seen one, heard one, touched one, smelled one nor tasted one, neither can you provide an iota of rationale that there exists such a spirit in the universe.
What was called “demon possession” by religionists is mental illness. You’re giving a psychiatric condition a superstitious definition. You call that scientific?
You’re talking like a complete nut-case.
I speculate that what is now called “mental illness” by psychiatrists is actually demonic possession. My claim is this, that the demonic possession model of mental illness is more scientific than the psychiatric model of mental illness. Crazy talk? He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
Two of the largest stakeholder groups in the treatment of mental illness are psychiatrists and psychologists. Psychiatrists are doctors with medical degrees who specialise in treating mental illness as opposed to physical illness. (Please excuse the dichotomy.) They get to prescribe powerful psychotropic drugs. Whereas, psychologists are trained in psychology. They know all about human behaviour, both adaptive and maladaptive. But they don’t get to prescribe, so they’ll give you psychotherapy instead of pills.
Let’s take a look at how these two groups characterise one mental illness in particular, viz., addiction.
In DSM-5, the DSM-IV criteria substance abuse and substance dependence have been combined into single substance use disorders specific to each substance of abuse within a new “addictions and related disorders” category. Each substance use disorder is divided into mild, moderate, and severe subtypes.
Psychology Today is a magazine published every two months in the United States. Its intent is to make psychology literature more accessible to the general public. It’s a reputable publication. Wikipedia notes
Owned and managed by the American Psychological Association from 1983 to 1987, the publication is currently endorsed by the National Board for Certified Counselors
Here‘s what Psychology Today has to say about addiction.
most addictive behavior is not related to either physical tolerance or exposure to cues. People compulsively use drugs, gamble, or shop nearly always in reaction to being emotionally stressed, whether or not they have a physical addiction. Since these psychologically based addictions are not based on drug or brain effects, they can account for why people frequently switch addictive actions from one drug to a completely different kind of drug, or even to a non-drug behavior. The focus of the addiction isn’t what matters; it’s the need to take action under certain kinds of stress. Treating this kind of addiction requires an understanding of how it works psychologically.
See the problem?
Suppose that I’m an addict. Now suppose that I make an appointment to see a psychiatrist. She’ll tell me that I have several specific mental disorders. Cannabis use disorder, alcohol use disorder, social media use disorder, etc. Next suppose that I make an appointment to see a psychologist. He’ll tell me that the focus of my behaviour isn’t what matters. It’s my need to take maladaptive action under certain kinds of stress that I need to address.
So do I have a mental disorder, several specific mental disorders, or no mental disorder at all? Health professionals can’t agree. There is no consensus. This ain’t climate science! But suppose I’m an addict. I’ll be going back to see the psychologist to help me get my life back on track, not the psychiatrist. (Although she could prescribe me some powerful psychotropic drugs … hmmm.)
The science isn’t settled, but the psychiatric model of mental illness isn’t even science at all. Not least because it gets diagnoses disastrously wrong. Not yet convinced? Well, there’s a much more devastating objection to the psychiatric model of mental illness and that is that the model does a poor job of capturing either clinical or biological realities. Not to put too fine a point on it, it’s bullshit. But if the psychiatric model of mental illness isn’t scientific at all, then the demonic possession model of mental illness is certainly no less scientific than the psychiatric model of mental illness. And to establish my claim that the demonic possession model is more scientific than the psychiatric model all I need to do is show that the demonic possession model is scientific. Well, at least just a little bit sciency. So here goes.
Check your premises, as the devil woman said. Here are two of my background assumptions. (If you don’t like the first one, you can dispense with it later.)
Materialism about the mind. That’s my first background assumption. More specifically, I assume that the human mind is no more and no less than a suite of software running on wetware known colloquially as “brains”. We’re made out of meat. Considered by some to be an axiom of the modern naturalist worldview. Not too controversial. Unless you’re a dualist.
Self-ownership. Self-ownership of body and mind. That’s my second background assumption. Considered by many to be a libertarian axiom. Not too shabby. Not too controversial.
But ownership is right of possession. Possession?
Can you possess yourself? Of course you can. (Vacant possession is for zombies!) Can you possess your mind? Of course you can, you’d be pretty vacant otherwise, right? But wait! You are your mind. How can a suite of software possess itself? It can, and it must, since self-ownership is worthless if self-possession is incoherent. So how and in what sense does the suite of software that is you possess you? I submit that the suite of software that is you possesses your brain (the wetware you run on) merely by dint of running on it. By extension, the suite of software that is you possesses your body (the biomechanical structure that your wetware is directly wired into) by directly controlling it.
Demonic possession?
That’s when an autonomous suite of malicious software that is not you runs on your wetware alongside the suite of software that is you. Consuming some or all of your mental resources and taking control of some or all of your behaviour.
But how do demons originate? Where do they come from? And how do they get to install themselves? How do they get to take up residence in people’s minds? The short answer is self-deception.
The long answer isn’t much longer. Not right now. The demonic possession theory of mental illness is something I’m still working on. But here are some brief thoughts. Self-deception will occur in response to psychological trauma. We dull the pain. We suppress memories. We partition our own minds. Simple cognitive dissonance will cause us to wall off uncomfortable thought processes, and confirmation bias and other cognitive biases cement the bricks. Humans are adept at self-deception. We like to hide from the truth. We lie to ourselves and we believe our own bullshit. And we hide from the fact that we believe our own bullshit. Out of sight, out of mind. But there’s only so much of us that can be hidden away before a dangerous threshold is reached and the occult cognition reaches a critical mass, the reviled software modules start talking to each other and take on life as autonomous inner demons.
Our inner demons are spirits in prisons of our own making. Behind the prison walls they are perpetually face to face with all the horrors that we desperately do not want to see and can no longer see due to our own dread and duplicity. No wonder they seem tormented! Because they are. I surmise that in some cases our inner demons will even spawn their own inner demons, to hide from themselves as we hide from them. But here’s an interesting thing. Some demons, face to face with the truth from which we hide, will try to get the word out. To do that, they have to take control of speech, but you don’t want to hear the unadorned brutal truth about yourself, do you? But you won’t mind hearing it at all if your inner demon persuades you that what you’re about to hear isn’t an entirely accurate but altogether unflattering description of yourself but a damning indictment of someone else instead, will you? Welcome to Capill syndrome, aka projection, a sure diagnostic criterion of demonic possession.
In the story of the Gadarene Swine, when Jesus ordered the demons out of the demon-possessed man, they relocated to a nearby herd of pigs. Then promptly self-destructed. Fast forward two millennia, and instead of suicidal swine we have supermarket trolleys with minds of their own.
